“I feel challenged because I’ve never been boring.” He dipped his head, pressed a soft, searching kiss to her wrist. “I believe in accurate timepieces. Tepid summer nights and blueberry scones and first-rate Scotch. Tangled sheets and damp skin. Bottomless kisses.” She made a low purring sound and leaned in, her lids fluttering. He waited until she opened her eyes before he continued, “I believe you can meet someone and know. I always have. The girl on the veranda is why no one has been able to touch my heart. I’ve been waiting for her, for you, my entire life.”
She didn’t stop him when he tunneled his hand through her hair to circle the nape of her neck. Didn’t stop him when he went to his knees and fit her against him, chest to chest, hip to hip, capturing her mouth beneath his. Didn’t stop him when he tilted her head, kissing her more soulfully, giving more of himself than he’d ever given. Didn’t stop him when he palmed her waist and pulled her in, letting her know in graphic detail exactly what she was doing to him.
Her lips were soft, her sighs sweet, her skin moist, her body perfect. Her arms rose to circle his shoulders and bring them closer, like hot wax on parchment, a seductive, molten press.
Following timelines and building trust and maintaining control slipped away. He let his lips slide to her cheek, her jaw, a sensitive spot beneath her ear as she released a heavy breath against his neck.
Dutifully, he would record everything she liked, every little thing.
Starting now.
“You’re mine,” he whispered, his voice sounding like it had been cut with jagged glass.
And that’s when she stopped him.
Rocking back off her kneeling pose, she broke his hold, landing on her bottom in the middle of the blanket.
He blinked, dazed, shaking his head as if the movement would return thought. “I’m sorry, I lost control. I don’t know what happened. I swear, I only wanted to talk to you, get to know you better and admit seeing you years ago, an admission that had started to feel like a betrayal of our fledgling friendship.”
She pressed her palm to her brow. “You don’t have to be sorry. I wanted you to kiss me. It was everything I imagined it would be. I didn’t push you away because I didn’t like it. I liked it too much.”
The hot lick of temper that had gotten him in trouble many, many times rolled through him. He wasn’t practiced at accepting things he didn’t want to hear. “This was a delicious taste, a glorious start. There’s much more, Raine, and God do I want more, but why do I have the feeling you’re going to tell me that can’t happen?”
She jerked her head up, her own temper sparking. “Because it can’t! There’s a pleasant young man on staff. Nash. A groom with a promising future, someone who occupies my world, Kit, someone who has intimated—”
“Oh, no, Raine Mowbray.” He grasped her wrist, giving her a gentle shake. “If you’re marrying anyone in this lifetime, it’s bloody well going to be me. I claimed the right ten years ago, even if you didn’t know it. Even if I didn’t fully know it. The thousand dreams I’ve had about you since then confirm the decision, make no mistake.”
Her eyes widened, her cheeks leeching color until he feared she would swoon. Then they filled with rosy-red fury. “Marriage? Should I have you admitted to Bedlam? I’m a housemaid, and you were just offered a knighthood! A union with me would be preposterous to consider when you could climb so much higher. You have patrons who would drop you and your accurate timepieces before you took your first matrimonial breath.”
He settled back on his heels, releasing her as if her skin had scorched his hands. “What did you think I was doing out here with you?”
Guilt raced across her face, and he realized what she’d thought: that he was toying with her as she’d been toying with him. His chest constricted, and he closed his eyes to fend off the crimson haze. To her, he was just another feckless aristocrat when in truth, he’d never fit anywhere except his lonely crevice. A crevice it seemed he was never to crawl from.
When he’d imagined creating his own universe with her in it.
A Latin phrase he recalled from school rolled through his mind. Contra mundum. Against the world. He’d wanted his future to be the two of them against the world.
“Go inside, Miss Mowbray. Before I say something I’ll regret. I have a lamentable disposition that’s landed me in more than one brawl. Ask Penny if you need proof.” He grabbed the bottle and lifted it to his lips, the taste of wine washing away the taste of her.
“I’ve hurt your feelings,” she said, her voice cracking. “Kit, I would never…that is, I…”
“Mister Bainbridge, if you don’t mind. Sir works, too.” He sprawled to his back, his arm going over his eyes to hide whatever might lie in their depths. He wasn’t accomplished at hiding his emotions, as those many scuffles Penny had rescued him from attested to. Raine witnessing his dismantling would serve no further purpose; her rejection was already stripping him bare. “Leave me to my plans to climb higher in society by means of an advantageous but loveless marriage. My plans to seduce a maid beneath a”—he shifted his arm and stared at the tree above them—“towering elm.”
She muttered something he didn’t catch, then said clearly, “I’ll leave as you’re not willing to discuss this rationally, when you know I’m right. I wish I weren’t right, do you not know that? I’m sorry, I would never do anything to hurt you. We’re becoming friends, and I’ve never had many of those.” She sounded close to tears, and he felt close to them.
He heard her rise, shake out her skirt, hesitate, when he wanted, suddenly and desperately, to be alone. “It looks like I’m going to have a lot of time to devote to creating a detached escapement caliber, and I need you and your German, Miss Mowbray, so don’t think about wheedling out of finishing the translations for me.”
There. Well done. If he made her mad, she’d bolt.
Women tended to do that; he tended to make them.
She cursed beneath her breath, a most unladylike sentiment, and stalked away, the sound of her footfalls lessening until halting pianoforte notes and a chorus of bleating crickets were all that surrounded him.
He was going to finish the bottle of wine and slumber beneath the stars. Stagger into Devon’s agreeable abode at dawn and sleep until supper. Let the entire household think him a mad artiste because perhaps he was. Penny could make excuses for him and supervise the translations, while Christian spent the rest of the week repairing the duke’s timepieces in seclusion.
Then he would bolt for London himself.
Because his heart was breaking.
Raine didn’t believe that love could happen instantaneously. Intuition or fate or destiny, whatever one wanted to call it.
And there was nothing he could do to make her believe.
Like the nick of a blade against tender skin, his dilemma was painful but uncomplicated.
For years, he’d loved someone who, when given a chance, wasn’t willing to love him back.
Chapter 4
Raine huddled beneath the starched sheet in her attic bed, tugged a counterpane of higher quality than Tavistock had ever provided for his staff to her chin. Moonbeams, the same that had tumbled over Kit so generously an hour ago, poured in the small window, highlighting the dust motes drifting through the air and the despair filling her heart.